Water use way down over last two decades

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This article was published 09/01/2020 (2098 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg has managed to “slow the flow” of water from its taps by 44 per cent over the last two decades.

Billing data from the City of Winnipeg shows the average amount of water consumed per person per day was 223 litres in 2018, down from 399 litres per day in 1990. Those numbers include residential, commercial and industrial consumption.

“The primary reason for the decline is the adoption of water efficient fixtures such as toilets and clothes washers,” a city spokesperson said in an email.

The introduction of the provincial Water Protection Act in 2005 and the city’s Slow the Flow public awareness campaign — which has been running since 1992 and features the recognizable faucet-nosed mascot Wally Watersaver — have also helped curb water consumption.

Water use is one of the city’s improving trends highlighted in the 2019 Peg Report, released today by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and United Way Winnipeg.

The community indicator system is designed to track how Winnipeg is performing in key areas of society — such as the economy, health, education, governance and the environment — over time based on the best available data.

“We wanted to give a very robust, comprehensive, data-driven picture of progress in this city,” said Beth Timmers, IISD project manager.

The Peg Report’s fifth edition has been aligned with the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals, which provide a framework for developed and developing countries to address issues like poverty, gender equality, justice and climate action.

“I think cities have seen themselves as the proper home of the sustainable development goals because it’s so immediate in people’s lives,” IISD communications officer Matthew TenBruggencate said. “We can talk about progress as a nation, but I think a lot of people think of progress as, how easy is it for me to get to work in the morning? How much does food cost?”

The information in the Peg Report is a roundup of data from sources like the City of Winnipeg, Statistics Canada, the Winnipeg Street Census and the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy.

Heather Block, United Way Winnipeg’s director of strategic initiatives, said collecting a wide swath of data in one place, and making it publicly available on mypeg.ca, helps individuals and organizations make informed decisions about community action and policies.

“For many of these things, it’s not the responsibility of one organization or one group to make a difference,” she said, adding that United Way has referenced the data when deciding where to invest new funds.

“(It) gives us the opportunity to look at where are the areas of greatest need.”

Where Winnipeg is making positive strides in sustainability (residential waste going to the landfill has decreased and recycling has increased), Block is concerned about the poverty-related indicators that appear to be worsening, like core housing need and youth unemployment.

“While our economic indicators are doing better, some of our basic needs aren’t improving at the same rate,” she said.

The Peg community indicator tracking system has caught the eye of a number of cities in North America and several countries.

Staff with IISD, which is located in Winnipeg, have helped set up similar online portals and data collection programs for communities in Ontario, Nova Scotia, Texas and the country of Trinidad and Tobago.

“That’s really exciting for me,” Timmers said. “It’s such an accessible and replicable project that’s relevant not only to everyday people, but also at that global level.”

 

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca